Two of indie music's most popular and tortured songwriters, Will Oldham (performing as Bonnie "Prince" Billy) and Neko Case, try to reconcile encroaching middle age with a past of bad habits on their new albums. Much of their newfound emotional tangibility stems from the full-band, Nashville country and roots arrangements they employ on their respective new releases, Case's Middle Cyclone (Anti-) and Bonnie Prince Billy's Beware (Drag City). There's an added warmth implied in this technique, but both artists are still battling their respective, time-tested demons. For Case, it's the sinister souls and letdowns always around the bend; Oldham, meanwhile, still isn't sure you can accept him for who he is. It sounds like both artists are becoming more resigned to the loads they bear.

If age begetting wisdom is a persistent undercurrent of both of those albums, it's the central drama of Chriss Sutherland's second solo album, Worried Love (his first album on Peapod Recordings, out this week). Sutherland has made a name for himself with dark and deeply idiosyncratic takes on outsider folk as part of Fire on Fire and, previously, Cerberus Shoal, but even his relatively sober solo debut (last year's Me in a 'Field', released on Digitalis Industries) doesn't quite prepare you for the lush, almost throwback country arrangements that dot Worried Love. Like Case and Oldham, Sutherland maintains his distinctive artistic tics — intuitive, garbled diction chief among them — while paying due deference to the traditions he's dabbling in.

Loosey-gooseyIn descending order of residual strangeness, it's sometimes hard to tell if Beware is Oldham at his loosest or his most elaborately goofy. Some of the gags — "Beware Your Only Friend"'s opening line, "I want to be your only friend," is followed by a backup chorus's response: "Is that scary?" — play like the band's (hilarious, invigorating) audition tape for A Prairie Home Companion, but Oldham's no stranger to tongue-in-cheek confessions, and that sensibility presides over much of the album. The chorus to "You Can't Hurt Me Now," built on nostalgic slide guitar and fiddle, begins "The more I feel myself/The more alone I am" (if you're wondering whether anything Oldham says is a double entendre, it almost always is); it's capped off by anachronistic but effective horns and xylophone. On "You Don't Love Me," Oldham opines, "You couldn't love me less if I was lord of Japan," which is of course followed by the toll of a gong. (Later, he says, "Sometimes you like the smell of me or how my stomach jiggles.")

Whether Oldham's being too clever is in the eye of the beholder, but even if you don't appreciate his jokes, you have to admit they mesh well with the album's primary concerns. Most of Beware finds him asking whether he's fit to love, or be loved. "Heart's Arms" pits the question with the album's starkest dualities, as insular, heavily reverbed sections of cello and electric guitar seesaw with expansive, orchestral country arrangements. In the latter, Oldham asks "Why don't you write me anymore/Have you found something as good just next door?"; in a more ominous passage, he threatens to "open this awful machine to nothing/Where once your intimacies came pounding." The song is darker and more suspenseful than most of Beware, but it hints at the game Oldham seems to be playing throughout the album, as he tries to answer some fundamental questions. If you root your fears in familiar (in this case, country and western) sentiments, are they any easier to swallow? And more urgently, can life be fulfilling if you "don't belong to anyone"? His response, uncertain shrug implied: "It's kind of easy to have some fun."

Music Seen: Neko Case + Haru Bangs First things first: Neko Case is the complete package, an unmitigated bombshell (gorgeous, wry, self-effacing) with a singular artistic vision (country/folk songs so heavy on metaphor and animistic and obscure mythological references that you could — and should — unpack them for months) and a voice like an air-raid siren.

Song of herself "Listen, I will go on record saying I love Feist, I love Neko Case. I love that music. But that shit's easy listening for the twentysomethings. It fucking is. It's not hard to listen to any of that stuff."

Making waves A packed weekend begins THURSDAY (the 30th) when the ladies take over at the Hi-Hat, with MELISSA FERRICK and locals Seriously Fierce (aka Heather Rose and Keturah) opening, call 401.453.6500.

Peter Wolf | Midnight Souvenirs This Boston music legend’s metamorphosis from party animal to monster songwriter became complete with his previous solo album.

Don't mess with Neko For some reason, an audience member hurled a CD — no case, just the shiny, sharp-edged disc — at the stage early in the band's set. This prompted New Pornographer Case to say, half-jokingly, "Whoever threw that, come up here, and I will fucking fight you. . . . I will go to jail, I don't give a shit."

2009: The top 10 in pop music Hmm, lots of women, a few old dudes, and some African banjo (not to be confused with Steve Martin's Hollywood banjo).

50 shows to see before finals week This is a message fromBostonFunShit, the Phoenix's authority on having a good time: Get out of your dorm. Here are 50 ways to have an unforgettable evening this semester.

TEN YEARS, A WAVE | September 26, 2014 As the festival has evolved, examples of Fowlie’s preferred breed of film—once a small niche of the documentary universe—have become a lot more common, a lot more variegated, and a lot more accomplished.

GIRLS (AND BOYS) ON FILM | July 11, 2014 The Maine International Film Festival, now in its 17th year in Waterville, remains one of the region’s more ambitious cultural institutions, less bound by a singular ambition than a desire to convey the breadth and depth of cinema’s past and present. (This, and a healthy dose of music and human-interest documentaries.) On that account, MIFF ’14 is an impressive achievement, offering area filmgoers its best program in years. With so much to survey, let’s make haste with the recommendations. (Particularly emphatic suggestions are marked in bold print.)

AMERICAN VALUES | June 11, 2014 The Immigrant seamlessly folds elements of New York history and the American promise into a story about the varieties of captivity and loyalty.

CHARACTER IS POLITICAL | April 10, 2014 Kelly Reichardt, one of the most admired and resourceful voices in American independent cinema, appears at the Portland Museum of Art Friday night to participate in a weekend-long retrospective of her three most recent films.

LET'S TALK ABOUT SEX | April 09, 2014 Throughout its two volumes and four hours of explicit sexuality, masochism, philosophical debate, and self-analysis, Nymphomaniac remains the steadfast vision of a director talking to himself, and assuming you’ll be interested enough in him to listen and pay close attention.